3. Those eighteen days – Unstoppable Bhima – Don’t underestimate your opponents – Mahabharata wisdom

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himself. Thank you.
Hare Krishna. So today on the third day of the Kurukshetra war, let’s look at the prominent events and what we can learn from them. On every day of the war, there was a defining battle and there was an overall result.
Now if we compare a sports match, there might be a particular famed batsman and a particular famed baller and between them there might be the defining contest of the day or even of the match and sometimes that contest may shape the overall results of the match in a huge way because in war, like in sports, optics matter, perceptions matter, morale matters, not just the might or the strength matters. That means that if somebody loses the defining battle, then the morale of the team may collapse. So the third day was such a day on which there was a defining battle and just as in sports and some days the defining battle may go one way and the overall result may go another way.
It may happen that sometimes the one team, say the batsman, gets out, the key batsman gets out against the key baller and yet the other batsman managed to bat well and overall the team gets the upper hand on that day. If we consider this to be like a test match rather than a one-day match, then each day some team ends up with the upper hand or the lower hand. So sometimes the defining battle of the day and the overall of the result of the day may be different.
However, the defining battle may leave scars that may last much longer and those scars will come up eventually. So the third day was such a day. It was a see-saw battle going on between the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
The first day Bhishma routed the Pandava army. The second day it was Bhima who routed the Kaurava army. On the third day both these factors came into play at different times.
Bhima continued his rampage against the Kauravas. The previous day he had been exhilarated by the sheer scale of the havoc that he had wrecked in the Kaurava camp and the terror that he had struck among them and therefore on the third day he came out with greater fury and force and fell upon the Kaurava armies, just breaking them apart one after another after another. Seeing this, Duryodhana decided to himself counter Bhima.
Now Duryodhana, as we have discussed, was quite arrogant and today also his arrogance comes into the picture. Now although he was arrogant, he was not stupid. That means that he knew that if it was enraged Arjuna attacking his forces, he would not be able to take down Arjuna, at least not in archery.
Arjuna was too good. But Bhima, he felt I can surely stop him. In fact, his whole life Duryodhana had been preparing to best Bhima.
They had had some friendly, they had had some duels which are supposed to be friendly while they were training in the academy of Drona and they also had some duels thereafter, especially during the martial exhibition at the end of their training, which had become, so that these duels had eventually become very earnest and not just earnest but deadly. They no longer practice rounds. So still they had never had a full on confrontation with each other and although the decisive confrontation between Bhima and Duryodhana came at the end of the Kurukshetra war on the 18th day, but there were encounters before that also.
So on this day, when Bhima was threatening to repeat the heroics of the previous day in destroying the Kaurava forces, Duryodhana challenged him and Duryodhana and Bhima fought fiercely and knowing what a danger Bhima could be, several other Kaurava warriors came forward to assist Duryodhana and on other side Bhima was also assisted by several other warriors and prominent among them was Ghatotkach. Now on this day, Bhima and Duryodhana and their confrontation was expected to be or shaping out to be the defining context of that day and yet because Duryodhana was the reigning prince of the Kuru dynasty, just as Yudhishthir was the reigning king, although he had no royal power at that time. So he was, both of them were surrounded by many warriors who would act as their protectors.
So the Bhima-Duryodhana conflict did not happen because Bhima had too many attackers around him who were also the protectors of Duryodhana and of course when we say Duryodhana was protected, that does not mean that Duryodhana was not himself fighting. He was also fighting but a head-on confrontation between Bhima and Duryodhana was avoided, was postponed, was forestalled because his protectors didn’t want Duryodhana to be endangered. So as Bhima was engaged with others, Bhima’s son Ghatotkach challenged Duryodhana.
Now Ghatotkach was a remarkable being. The Mahabharata, we could say complexifies reality. I prefer the word complexify to complicate over here because complexify I am using in the sense that something which is complex and the complex is depicted.
Complicate means that which is simple, we make it more difficult, more messy. So the Mahabharata depicts the complexity of reality and what do I mean by this? That if you compare the Mahabharata with the Ramayana, the lines between good and evil are very clearly drawn in the Ramayana and they are drawn largely along we could say dynastic lines in the sense that not just dynasties but you could call it species. Ravan is a demon, not just having a demoniac mentality, but he’s also born in the Rakshasa dynasty, whereas Ram is a supreme lord who has descended in the human dynasty.
So the war was between humans and demons. Of course, there are shades of grey where in Vibhishan had come over to Ram’s side. But overall on the Ram’s side there were, all the Rakshasas were on Ravan’s side except for Vibhishan.
So the lines of black and white, the forces of good and evil were relatively clear and clearly divided. In the Mahabharata those lines are much more complexified. Why? Because we have on the dark side, on the side of evil which is presided by Duryodhana, there were extraordinarily virtuous characters.
There was Bhishma, there was Drona, there was Kripa, there was Shalya and not only that, although Duryodhana had a demoniac mentality, he didn’t have a demoniac form and actually there were some demoniac beings. Now demon can refer to a mentality which is internal and demoniac or demons can also refer to those who have a particular form. So we can have people who are demoniac mentality and also people who have a demoniac form.
So we could largely say that the form and the mentality will often go together but not always. So we have notable exceptions such as Prahlad despite being born in a demon family was not only not demoniac, he was the foremost of devotees. So, usually the demoniac form and the demoniac mentality would go together, not always though.
So the point I’m making over here is that in the Kaurava war, although the demoniac mentality was clearly of Duryodhana, not all the demons were fighting on Duryodhana’s side. He had certain aides like Alambush who was the brother of the demon Bakasur who had been killed by Bhima. Now this Bakasur is different from the Bakasur described in Krishna Leela who was bisected by Krishna who had come as a duck.
That is different. This Bakasur was a voracious cannibal who would devour large quantities of food, animals and even human beings and then that agreement that he would take one human being at a periodic interval. And when Bhima went as that human being, Bhima ate all the food meant for Bakasur and then defeated Bakasur and delivered the world of that menace.
And Alambush wanted to revenge the death of his brother. So, he had joined Duryodhana. On the other side, Bhima who had been the killer of demons like Bakasur and also, he had also killed another demon Hidimba and Hidimbi, the sister of Hidimba had been attracted to Bhima and she expressed her heart to Bhima and Bhima after getting the consent of, not just the consent, actually the instruction of Kunti and Yudhishthira, he had united with her.
They had married in the forest itself and then from their union had been born this formidably powerful demoniac being Ghatotkach. Now, Ghatotkach was not exactly a demon. He certainly had a demoniac form, but he did not exactly have a demoniac mentality.
He was powerful, he could be brutal, but he was devoted to his father. We see that many of the demons also, demons in the sense that those who are demoniac form, even they have a sense of honor, although sometimes the sense of honor might be misdirected. So, it is because of a sense of honor that Kumbhakarna fought on the site of Ravan.
Now, here Ghatotkach had that sense of honor and it was his great fortune that he had a father who was as virtuous as Bhima and he became a part of a virtuous family of the Pandavas and he became connected with Krishna. So, Ghatotkach used this formidable might and he targeted Duryodhana. Initially, Duryodhana neglected Ghatotkach.
He thought that this is the son of my rival. He is no match to me. And I don’t want to fight with kids.
That was the idea. But Ghatotkach continued challenging and seeing how much havoc Ghatotkach was wreaking in his camp and seeing that Bhima was engaged elsewhere, Duryodhana turned and started facing Ghatotkach and as they kept fighting, fighting, fighting within moments, it became clear that Ghatotkach was no kid. Of course, he was a powerful Kshatriya, a powerful warrior, Rakshasa that could be seen from his form and form itself.
But Duryodhana realized that he was not going to have an easy victory over Ghatotkach as he had earlier thought. So, he started fighting with more earnestness and yet Ghatotkach countered him easily and this was becoming more and more of a difficult fight and is also becoming a little confused fight. Although normally there would be a duel between one Kshatriya and other Kshatriya, but sometimes the Kshatriya warriors would join together and when they would join together for fighting, their opponents would also join together and then the fights would happen.
So, Bhima was also there on the opposite side with Ghatotkach and over a period of time, Ghatotkach’s attacks became so ferocious that Duryodhana could barely sustain himself and as he was fighting, he was also observing what Bhima is doing and whether Bhima is being checked by the remaining army or not and Ghatotkach kept attacking, Duryodhana kept defending, but eventually Ghatotkach hurled a powerful weapon straight at Duryodhana and Duryodhana didn’t realize the force of that weapon and he thought that he could just sustain it, but it came and hit him and knocked him down and just knocked him down, it knocked him out. He fell on his chariot and getting a powerful warrior like Duryodhana to fall to the ground itself was a victory. Of course, he fell on the chariot, not on the ground, but that itself was a victory.
But more than that, not only did he fall down, he got knocked out. He fell unconscious and seeing the danger, his chariot started retreating to take the fainted prince to safety. As the charioteer was retreating, after some time, Duryodhana came back to consciousness and he was incensed to think that Ghatotkach had knocked him out and he turned around and looked around and he saw that his forces were in a state of chaos because they hadn’t expected Duryodhana, their prince to be defeated by Ghatotkach and Ghatotkach was exulting in his victory and falling upon the Kaurava forces and Bhima was also going on and he was getting the upper hand over his opponents, were trying, struggling to keep him in check and at this point Duryodhana jumped up and he called out to his warriors, are you cowards? Have you no sense of honor? Why are you letting these enemies overpower you? Fight back gallantly and be the heroes that you are meant to be.
Duryodhana was speaking not just to his soldiers, he was speaking to himself. Although externally he was showing fury and force, internally he was stunned. He was shaken by the prowess of Ghatotkach and he charged back into the fight.
Seeing him charging back, his soldiers also regained their morale and they started pressing back against the Pandavas and as Duryodhana was charging towards the center of the confrontation, he looked around and saw that Bhishma was engaged with some not so noteworthy warriors and he turned around and raced towards Bhishma. He says, oh Grandsire, please protect our army. Is it because of your partiality towards Arjuna and the Pandavas that you are not fighting wholeheartedly and you are letting my army get destroyed? So, although he was respectful, the accusation still stung Bhishma and Bhishma turned away from Duryodhana wordlessly and started charging into the Pandava forces and Bhishma fell upon them and he started destroying them.
Seeing this, Krishna told Arjuna, go and stop the Grandsire. Arjuna had no heart to face Bhishma especially in a one-to-one confrontation. But seeing what Bhishma was doing to their forces, Arjuna girded himself and charged towards Bhishma.
By this time Bhishma had already started doing a lot of damage. Arjuna tried his best to hold him back. Arjuna’s heart was not in the fight and overall during that day Bhishma wreaked significant havoc on the Pandava forces and the Kauravas gained the upper hand.
However, the defining memory of that day was Ghatotkach besting Duryodhana and that created a scar on Duryodhana and it shaped the direction of the battle for the future days. So, here Duryodhana because of his arrogance made a mistake of underestimating his enemies. He knew that Bhima was a threat but he didn’t think Ghatotkach to be that great a threat and he came in for a nasty shock.
He had assessed the opposing warriors and that assessment is described also in the introduction of the Bhagavad Gita in the first chapter. But there also it doesn’t mention Ghatotkach. He thought that Ghatotkach would be no threat to him and he found that he was more than a match.
So, quite often when we face challenges in our life, what pride or arrogance does to us is it makes us underestimate our opponents and it was not that Ghatotkach could easily defeat Duryodhana but that Duryodhana was unprepared for the skill and the force of Ghatotkach because he had not even considered that threat adequately. So, if we underestimate our opponents, we undermine ourselves. We undermine ourselves in the sense that we turn up unprepared or underprepared and thus we make the battle much tougher than it needs to be.
So, during our life also we face various challenges externally and internally and we need to dispassionately assess the size of the threats and prepare accordingly. Pride makes us presume that we are stronger than what we actually are and makes us presume that the things opposing us are weaker than what they are. So, if we underestimate our opponents, we undermine ourselves.
That was the lesson that Duryodhana learned the hard way when bested by Ghatotkach on the third day of the Kurukshetra war. Thank you.